by Sean McMahon
Hal felt his stomach, as if there was a direct correlation with carrying out the action and making an informed decision, eventually relaying to her what she already suspected.
‘I’m not even remotely hungry…’ said Hal, finally.
‘Me neither. Which is probably just as well, since we haven’t even tried to eat food since we ended up stuck in the past,’ said Kara, wondering if she could even pick up food whilst displaced in time, let alone actually being able to consume it.
Hal reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, then kicked himself, as he realised that he’d smoked his last one the day before. He chucked the box carelessly in frustration, watching as it flew through Robert’s head, and landed in the hot tub. The box ignored the water, and immediately fell to the bottom of the tub, as if the tub itself were empty. Hal hesitated for a moment, and then leant over the edge of the hot tub. His curiosity getting the better of him, he took a deep breath and submerged his head into the water, peering down at the box and staring at the ridiculous paradox before him; With the jets of water obscuring his vision, he could just about make out the small piece of cardboard, which was unaffected by the water entirely, what with it being out of phase with time, and was inexplicably resting on the hard plastic base of the hot tub, instead of floating on the waters of the past. Not even the jets could disturb it from its final resting place.
Pulling his head from the water, he went to wipe the water from his eyes. Instead, he was startled to discover his head was completely dry. He took another deep breath, this time exhaling slowly, in an attempt to remain calm.
‘Nothing about this damn place makes any sense,’ said Hal, feeling aggravated by the lack of coherence to the rules this new world appeared to follow. A world he had been thrust into unwillingly.
‘As revelations go, this isn’t your best work,’ said Kara, who had sprung up behind him during his deep-dive, wondering why he was bobbing for apples in Robert’s new home in the first place. Hal, realising she hadn’t seen what he’d just witnessed, dutifully elaborated.
‘The box I was using for my smokes,’ said Hal, ‘I chucked it in the hot tub, it should be floating.’
‘Makes sense I guess, it’s out-of-phase just like we are. Why would it?’
‘Yeah, I agree, except if that were true, why is it resting on the bottom of the tub?’
Kara stepped closer and stood next to him, then peered over the edge of the tub. Between the bubbles she could just about make out the distorted outline of his makeshift cigarette container. She still didn’t really see what he was getting at.
‘I’m sorry Hal, I really don’t understand why this is a big deal?’
‘Well, why doesn’t it fall through the base of the tub?’ said Hal. ‘Why does it pass through water but not through solid objects? Come to think of it, why are we not falling through floors, plummeting to the earth’s core, and out the other side?’
‘Oh. Oh damn,’ said Kara, her mind blown by the point he’d just made. ‘You mean why can’t we walk through a closed door, or a car, but when it comes to the gang, we pass right through them?’
They stood there, staring at the bubbling water, as the aberration of time gazed back at them from the depths, the answers to their questions remaining as evasive as ever.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hard Light
1st Restart – Saturday Afternoon, 1:08pm
Kara and Hal remained in the rear garden whilst their friends changed into their fancy-dress costumes. It felt unethical to be floating around, trying to gain intel from rooms they hadn’t been in the first time around, whilst the gang were changing their clothes. Now that the remainder of the guests had arrived, and they had all of the puzzle-pieces at their disposal, all they lacked were the instructions on how to proficiently assemble the puzzle itself.
As their friends made their way into the rear garden, Hal and Kara noticed that the colours of their chosen family’s costumes were popping with a vibrancy that they hadn’t noticed the first time around.
Hal shielded his eyes, looking away from Jasmine’s knee-high silver boots which, despite complimenting her glamorous take on a member of the iconic quartet Abba, were currently channelling what appeared to be the entirety of the sun’s electromagnetic radiation, reflecting it straight into Hal’s corneas.
Meanwhile, Kara was doing the same thing to avoid making eye-contact with Santa’s trousers, jacket, and hat, which were all emitting their own eye-wateringly vivid red laser beams of refracted sunlight. The brightness gave her another ice-pick migraine, her right temple throbbing savagely. She winced at the pain, but it dissipated quickly.
‘I don’t remember real life being so…bright?’ said Hal, turning away from the eclectic light show playing out in front of him, choosing instead to stare at the dullest object he could find. He set his sights on a nice patch of mud, situated a few metres away from where they were standing.
‘I know,’ said Kara, experiencing the same discomfort. ‘It comes and goes, but everything seems…it’s like the high-definition settings have been set to the max. You want to go inside?’ she suggested, eager to get away from the dazzling sights that were bombarding their senses. Hal nodded vigorously, and they made their way back into the lodge like a couple of mole-people.
As they headed up the central wooden staircase and into the kitchen, they heard a gruff man’s voice through the open kitchen window calling out to Jerry. They looked at each other, and ran towards the rear balcony. Staring down, they saw the arrival of Kevin play out for a second time. Hal felt a pain in his chest that felt a lot like heartburn, and tried to put his finger on the odd sense he was experiencing that something felt off.
‘Is it just me, or does Kevin seem…off to you?’ said Hal, suspiciously.
Kara was about to say she didn’t feel anything at all about the guy one way or another, but then she felt a twinge in her right temple again, and strangely changed her mind.
‘Sort of,’ said Kara, ‘I get where you’re coming from actually.’
Kevin, having finished his conversation with Jon, headed off after Jerry, blissfully unaware that he was reliving his Saturday afternoon for the second time that weekend. Hal and Kara remained upstairs on the balcony, their eyes finding it easier to adjust to the brightness of their surroundings now that they were viewing the unfolding events from a distance.
*
Their privacy was interrupted with the arrival of Rachel, who shot up the stairs to the kitchen area to cook some more food in the oven, now that Jon and Robert had blitzed through their barbecuing. Shortly after, Alex joined her, and Hal and Kara remained where they stood, intent on staying out of their way.
Hal heard his brother Alex making small-talk, as he asked Rachel if she could smell gas. Alex then popped a bottle-cap from his beer, throwing it at the nearby bin, and grimaced as he missed the shot, finally making his way onto the balcony Hal and Kara were still occupying.
As Alex made his way towards them, his cumbersome inflatable ghost-busting pack smashed into the door frame, completely preventing them from ducking past him. Kara had managed to sidestep to the right-hand side of the balcony, but Hal wasn’t quite as fortunate. Alex, walking with huge strides of intent, was standing right in front of Hal now. The invasion of personal space caused Hal to consider jumping over the edge of the balcony itself, but he resisted the urge, not entirely keen on the idea of being stuck in this time-loop with a broken leg.
Alex lit a cigarette and then, without warning, took another step forward, occupying the same corner of space that Hal was desperately trying to cram himself into to stay out of his brother’s way. As Alex’s face passed through his own, Hal saw a momentary sheet of whiteness, and then he found himself staring into the communal dining area.
Alex shuddered, unware that a time traveller had just passed through his face. Hal had only one option, and he balled his fingers into assertive fists, clenched his jaw, closed his eyes, and with an irksome whine of resignation
he took a step forward, no longer sharing the same area of space as his brother. He was finally free, but required Kara’s reassurance before he opened his eyes again.
‘Am I through?! Am I out?! Kara talk to me, where do I go?!’
‘Calm down Hal, you’re through,’ she said, trying to resist the urge to laugh, but failing miserably. ‘Take two steps forward and you’ll be inside the lodge,’ she added, her words broken up between snorts of giggling.
With his eyes still closed, he took her advice, and walked straight into the door frame with a noiseless thud, which instantly brought an end to not only his progress, but also his patience.
‘Oh, come on! Dammit! Really?!’ said Hal, as Kara gave up entirely on trying to mask her enjoyment over his misfortune.
‘My bad, sorry!’ she said, not sounding very sorry at all.
Hal opened his eyes, and made his way into the dining area, slumping down onto an unoccupied dining-room chair.
‘That was…uncomfortable,’ noted Hal, with an air that implied serious understatement.
‘Did you see his brains and stuff when he walked through you?!’ asked Kara, a little too eagerly.
‘What? That’s where your mind went? No Kara, I didn’t “see his brains and stuff”, it was just…nothing but whiteness whilst I was all…up in there,’ said Hal, shuddering at the memory.
‘Oh. That seems lazy. Like if that was a movie you’d expect to see all the synapses and stuff firing off, lots of cool colours,’ said Kara, an edge of disappointment in her tone.
‘First of all, my eyes aren’t equipped with microscopic lenses,’ said Hal. ‘I don’t think you could see that much detail just by passing through someone’s brain. Second of all, can we please stop talking about how I just walked through my brother’s face now please?!’
‘Sorry, sorry it’s just, I was expecting more than just–’
Hal finished her sentence ‘Our friends being little more than a hard-light construct? Like a Green Lantern made them?’
Kara looked puzzled, ‘What do you mean?’
Hal ditched the analogy and rephrased his reply.
‘Yeah, I expected there to be more to them that just that whiteness too. I’m sorry for being cranky, it’s just…damn. That was weird as shit.’
‘So, does this mean our friends…aren’t real?’ said Kara, asking the question that was now on both of their minds. ‘Like they aren’t really here? That they’re just projections?’
Hal thought about that for a moment.
‘I don’t think we can assume anything at this point, said Hal eventually. ‘We just need to get through to tonight, wait for our past-selves to get back, and hope that everything realigns with itself.’
Kara agreed, and so it was decided. Just a few more hours and they would be back in their own bodies, everything would revert to normal, and things would be back to how they should be.
She had to believe that was true.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hal and Kara’s Bogus Journey
1st Restart – Saturday Evening, 8:41pm
The sound of a broken champagne flute, the popping of a cork. Both of these things signifying that it was nearly time. Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” echoed throughout the lodge from an unseen speaker, as Hal and Kara feigned patience, waiting for their nightmare to finally conclude. They were sitting on the bonnet of Robert’s Car, taking mischievous pleasure from the fact that they knew how much that would have annoyed him.
‘Okay,’ said Hal, watching through the front door window of Fir Lodge as his past-self rubbed the back of his head and made his way to his bedroom. ‘So, I think I go outside in a minute and try to call Jess. Then you call me back in? You’re upstairs with Daisy, right?’
Kara nodded.
‘Yeah, cleaning up the glass that Fearne knocked over. Which means Jerry should be right about–’ and right on cue, Jerry sauntered up the driveway. He cocked his head up at them, looking as puzzled as a dog could look, and growled playfully at them. They remained perfectly silent so as not to distract him, and with an indignant sniff, he continued on his way through the front doors of the lodge.
‘Well I guess we know for certain he can kind of see us now,’ noted Kara.
‘Uh-huh. That’s apparently a thing,’ said Hal, begrudgingly accepting what he considered to be just another stupid paradox in a very long list of stupid rules they were currently bound by.
They heard Kara’s past-self call for Hal and, beholden to the lasso of inevitability, Hal’s past-self entered stage right, as the final string of events set themselves in motion. Their past-incarnations exited the lodge, closing the door behind them, and set off on their errand.
‘Oh, you closed the door when you left?’ said Hal, ‘so that’s why it was closed when we got back…’
Kara shrugged, as their considerably more-corporeal doubles walked obliviously past their time-travelling counterparts, who remained motionless on the bonnet of Robert’s car. As they did so, the bonnet of the car concaved ever-so-slightly under their combined weight.
‘Did you feel that?!’ said Hal.
‘Yeah!’ said Kara, her mind racing at the prospect.
This was the first time they had interacted with anything since she had inadvertently moved Robert’s wing mirror.
‘I mean…it might just have been the car cooling down or something,’ said Hal, not sounding too convinced by his own statement.
Whatever the cause, his past-self had clearly heard it too, looking at the bonnet for a brief second or two.
‘You’re thinking of houses Hal, the car hasn’t been used for over a day.’
‘Valid point,’ conceded Hal, the shared experience raising yet more questions.
‘Should we follow them?’ whispered Kara.
Hal considered it. ‘I don’t think so, we don’t know how far away we can travel from the lodge, it might mess things up.’
Not wanting to be the one to make a suggestion that could jeopardise the success of their mission, Kara decided to follow Hal’s lead on this one, frustrated by the passivity of their plan. It didn’t sit right with her, doing nothing in the hope that it would lead to something.
The concept of relativity, often attributed to the passage of time, was corroborated over the next ten minutes, which felt more like ten hours from their perspective. Kara felt grateful she couldn’t feel the cold, nor the coolness of the metal bonnet of the car against her bare legs. Spotting a thin mist, that had appeared out of nowhere, and had begun to creep towards them at ground level, Kara drew Hal’s attention to it.
‘Hal, the fog’s back.’
‘Okay, we’re getting close now. Any second now, we should be walking back up that drive,’ said Hal, with such optimism and certainty that he was even starting to convince himself. And so, they waited.
And waited.
The fog was thickening now, rising up above the bonnet of Robert’s car like a rising tide. Kara pulled in her legs, which were dangling over the front of the car, as if allowing the fog to make contact with her would somehow ruin everything.
Kara was beginning to panic, and said aloud what Hal was clearly already thinking. ‘Hal…we should be back by now.’
‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ said Hal, ‘something’s changed. We must have changed events somehow…’ the slightly erratic, panic-fuelled break in his voice as clear as their vision was obscured.
As the fog thickened around them, they edged closer together, instantly recoiling as their shoulders made contact with each other and a surge of blue electricity repelled them apart.
‘Hal…’ said Kara, barely able to make out the hood of the car anymore, now that their surroundings had all but vanishing into the static sea of white. ‘What do we do?’
‘What can we do Kar’? Maybe this is part of it…maybe we just need to let this play–’
Suddenly, they heard the familiar rush of air, experiencing a blinding whiteness in every direction, hammering their sens
es into submission. The thundering, relentless sound of air working in unison with the fog to systematically obliterate everything around them.
And then, after what felt like an eternity, the sound ceased without warning. Once again, they were dazzled by an intense, heatless sunlight, as they fell to the ground, overcome with an insurmountable wave of extreme dizziness. As their eyesight was returned to them, they could see that, in terms of detail, everything around them remained just as intensely defined as it had done following their first journey back through time.
Hal and Kara found themselves, once again, standing outside Fir Lodge.
‘Please no…’ said Hal, clearly on the verge of a breakdown. They waited in silence, knowing exactly what was coming, but still maintaining hope that they were wrong. And then, as Will’s car pulled up towards them, they knew for certain what was happening.
They were right back where they started.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Third Kara
2nd Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:02pm
Once they had fully aligned themselves with what they now realised was their second jump into the past, Kara was the first to break the silence.
‘Real solid plan Hal, doing absolutely bloody nothing for thirty-three hours.’
Hal was still shaking off the queasiness of his turbulent journey through space and time, though the former was only technically a few metres away from where he had previously been perched, given that he had been on the bonnet of Robert’s car.
‘We had to try it, if only to rule it out,’ said Hal sheepishly.
They surveyed their surroundings, turning their backs on the cars that were arriving before their past-selves showed up, and made their way to a picnic bench at the rear of Fir Lodge.
As Hal slumped himself down onto the bench, he noticed the right-hand pocket of his boiler suit was slightly raised, the fabric vacuum-formed around a rectangular object. Slowly, he reached into his pocket, and removed the cardboard filter box that he had lost to the depths of the hot tub in the previous timeline. He gingerly used his thumb to flip open the lid to the box and peered inside, his hopes and dreams aligning to create a sense of pure elation.
